Rotating Drawing Views in SolidWorks

May 15th, 2012

Want a SolidWorks drawing view oriented at a “funny” angle ??
Front, Top, Right, etc. just not getting you what you want ??

Two easy ways to reorient a Drawing View in SolidWorks…

#1: Right+Clk the view, and choose ZOOM/PAN/ROTATE then ROTATE VIEW
A dialog box will pop up where you can enter an ANGLE if you like, OR you can just ignore that box and use your
mouse to LEFT drag to rotate the view.

#2: This is the one that a lot of people don’t know about.
PRE-SELECT any (straight) edge on the model in a drawing view, and from the pulldown menu (I know, painfull…)
choose TOOLS–ALIGN DRAWING VIEW and then either HORIZONTAL EDGE or VERTICAL EDGE.
The view will re-orient itself to what you chose. Pretty cool !

Also, don’t forget another good command you might need AFTER this is ALIGNMENT–DEFAULT ROTATION (thru Rt+Clk on a view) to get BACK.

Randy Simmons

Randy Simmons
Application Engineer, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

Posted in 3D CAD, SolidWorks, Tips & Tricks, Training | No Comments »

2013 Beta Program

May 11th, 2012

SolidWorks 2013 Beta is coming fast (in June)!  If you’ve never participated in the program before, consider the following reasons to join the beta team:

  • If you want SolidWorks to get better, there’s never a more influential period of time to communicate directly with the SolidWorks development team.  About 90% of the feedback I gave them last year was implemented before SP0!  This is a period of hectic enhancement implementations.  If you want to see a tweak to the tools, interface, or any other bit of the software after SP0 has been released, chances are, you’ll have to submit an enhancement request and wait until next year  …that’s not the case in Beta though.
  • Most large companies do quite a bit of in-house testing before upgrading to the next major release of SolidWorks.  The premise of this testing is to ensure the new version of SolidWorks integrates with their custom processes and other business systems seamlessly.  If testing is going to be done before upgrading, why not do it during the Beta phase!?  Rather than being forced to develop creative solutions to problems on the fly, have the SolidWorks Beta Development Team fix that problem before it ever gets a chance to exist in the official release.
  • During the Beta phase, there are plenty of contests and prizes handed out to the most active participants.  This is the one time you’ll actually get rewarded for finding bugs in SolidWorks.  You’ll also have a chance to showcase your creativity with modeling and rendering contests as well.

If you’re a SolidWorks user, there’s absolutely no reason not to try out SolidWorks Beta 2013.  Just be sure to use ‘Pack and Go‘ to make completely separate copies of your existing data to test in 2013.  Remember, once you save a file in a later release, you won’t be able to open it up in a prior release  …right?  [wink, wink]  ;  )

Jordan Tadic

Jordan Tadic

Application Engineer, CSWE

3DVision Technologies

follow me @TadicWorks

 

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Find the status of your EPDM search

May 7th, 2012

Remember back in SolidWorks Enterprise PDM 2011 when you did a search the results of the search would appear in the bottom left hand corner of the search window?

Then when EPDM 2012 came out and they integrated the search tool within Windows Explorer, we thought it was lost? I really missed it, oftentimes I wanted to know how many files were found in a search.

What once was lost is now found.

In Windows 7′s Windows Explorer, go to the view menu and turn on the status bar. (If you cannot see the menu, click the Alt key, it will appear.)

TurnOnStatus

Now, after a search, look in the bottom left hand corner….presto!

StatusBar

Jeff Sweeney

 Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

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SolidWorks Launches eDrawings App for iPad

May 4th, 2012

3DVision Technologies is thrilled to annouce that on May 1, SolidWorks launched eDrawings for iPad.

Since its launch, eDrawings software has become a successful and much loved collaboration product. In the last year alone more than 2 million customers downloaded the eDrawings Viewer. With multi-touch gestures, eDrawings for iPad lets you pan, zoom and rotate 2D and 3D models; animate and explode your 3D views’ and view and animate drawings from:

- SolidWorks 3D design software
- DraftSight free CAD software
- AutoCAD software
- DWG and DXF files

The eDrawings for iPad is now available on the Apple iTunes App Store worldwide. The application user interface will initially be available in English only. However, it will support eDrawings files in all languages created with eDrawings publishers, SolidWorks and DraftSight.

So visit the Apple App Store today and download the eDrawings for iPad App!

Carrie Cavanaugh

Carrie Patrick
Marketing Manager
3DVision Technologies

Posted in 3D CAD, Announcements, SolidWorks, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Louisville SolidWorks User Group Attracts Special Guest Speaker, Mark Biasotti

May 1st, 2012

On Tuesday, May 15 the Louisville SolidWorks User Group will host special guest, Mark Biasotti, Product Manager from SolidWorks Corporate.

Mark is a degreed Industrial Designer and has worked in the field as a professional for more than 25 years for such companies as Atari, Hewlett Packard and IDEO. After 16 years at IDEO in California, Mark joined SolidWorks in Concord, Massachusetts as a Product Manager helping to strategically guide the company in identifying commercial and consumer product design opportunities and working with development to enhance SolidWorks for product design.

For the past 2 years Mark has held the position of Product Manager for the New Product Concepts Group of which one of their first product offerings being PhotoView360. He is currently holding the position of Senior Product Definition Specialist helping to define a future SolidWorks product.

During the May 15th event, Mark will be covering Advanced Modeling Techniques with a focus on Surfacing. However, he has a wide array of knowledge and will be available to answer questions.

The event is being hosted at SAMTEC USA, 520 Park East Blvd, New Albany, Indiana 47150 from 6 to 8:30pm. To register for this event please email paul@mccroreydigital.com

Carrie Cavanaugh

Carrie Patrick
Marketing Manager
3DVision Technologies

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Exclusive Lunch and Learn Event – May 9

April 24th, 2012

3DVision Technologies in partnership with SolidWorks invite you to two exclusive and informative presentations:

Create High Quality Technical Communications
May 9, 2012
9am – 1pm (Continental Breakfast and Lunch included)
Columbus Marriott Northwest
Learn how best-in-class companies are leveraging their 3D CAD data to improve their technical communications.
During this event we will show you how to:
- Leverage your 3D CAD data across your entire organization
- Differentiate product documentation and marketing collateral to win more business
- Simplify and streamline the development of technical documentation

To register for this event, click here.

Make Better Designs and Reduce Risks
May 9, 2012
Noon – 4pm (Lunch included)
Columbus Marriott Northwest
Learn how best-in-class companies use Design Validation early in design to optimize products and prevent errors.
During this event you will learn how to:
- Quickly test and validate while you design
- Improve your product quality while reducing the number of prototypes
- Make sustainable design decisions while lowering material costs
- Speed-up your time to market

To register for this event, click here.

There is limited seating and space is first come first served so you are encouraged to register today. If you would like to register for the FULL DAY please click here.

Carrie Cavanaugh

Carrie Patrick
Marketing Manager
3DVision Technologies

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Suppressing Folders in DriveWorks

April 18th, 2012

Checkout this DriveWorks trick Great Aunt Eleanor taught me!

When possible, she likes to group features for particular part options together in one SolidWorks folder. This can greatly reduce the amount of DriveWorks rules she needs to maintain because it is possible to suppress/delete a folder (and all the features inside) by capturing the folder and building a rule only for it.

SolidWorkFolder

A folder can be captured in exactly the same way as you would a feature, by single-clicking on the folder icon and adding it to the Dimensions and Features section of the DriveWorks Task Pane inside SolidWorks. Once captured, you will then be able to build a rule for the folder in the Model Rules section. Having the rule evaluate to be suppress/delete will suppress/delete the folder and all of the contents.

DeleteFolderInDriveWorks

In the above example, if the user is wanting model “312″, one DriveWorks rule removes all the features not needed for this model.

Be careful though, if you have the feature folder and the features inside captured, it could be possible for your feature rules to conflict with the rule for the folder. Thus if you need to capture the features inside of the folder typically you would not create a rule for the feature folder.

This functionality is only available in DriveWorks Solo and Pro.

Jeff Sweeney

 Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

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Restricting your EPDM addin

April 15th, 2012

There are a lot of API snobs out there who feel their SolidWorks Enterprise PDM code is too good to be run by just anyone, perhaps only members of a certain user group are allowed to run their precious code.

Perhaps they are writing something that should only be run by administrators.

I personally am a programmer for the people; but if you are related to Marie Antoinette, it is pretty easy to accomplish this act of discrimation. You include an “if-then” statement, like the one below, in your addin’s “GetAddInInfo” routine and you’ll be eating cake in no time.

If AllowedUser(poVault) = True Then
poCmdMgr.AddCmd(1, "Name of the special function", EdmMenuFlags....)
End If

You’ll need to write an “AllowedUser” function that can use the vault object parameter to return TRUE if this person is royalty or FALSE if this is a “commoner”.

Commoners will never even see your routine in their right mouse click.

Remember the “GetAddInInfo” routine is only run once – when you first log into the vault. If a user suddenly becomes an “allowed” user, he’ll have to reload his Windows Explorer process to see the change.

Jeff Sweeney

 Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

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Strengthening Ribs in Sheetmetal – NEW in SW2012

April 14th, 2012

SolidWorks 2012 has a great NEW feature in Sheetmetal that a lot of people have been asking for over the years. It is the ability to EXCLUDE certain faces from trying to flatten, thus making it possible to create things like strengthening ribs on a bracket.

sheetmetal rib 01

In the past you could of course model this, but when you tried to get the flat pattern it would fail.
Now in SolidWorks 2012 you can EDIT the FLAT PATTERN feature and just select the “rib faces” (on BOTH sides) in the new “Faces To Exclude” box. Then the Flat Pattern will “ignore” those faces and flatten just fine.

sheetmetal rib 02

It even has some really cool new functionality of being able to just right click a face and use “Select Tangency” to get the faces in a couple quick clicks rather than picking them all individually AND it is smart enough to not run the tangency selection past the fillets!
Pretty cool stuff !! Give it a try !

Randy Simmons

Randy Simmons
Application Engineer, CSWP, SW Elite AE
3DVision Technologies

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Error report – should you send it in?

April 9th, 2012

Ever seen this before?

ErrorReport

Certainly not as often anymore, but I’ll see it every once in a while.

Do you send the report to SolidWorks? I certainly do. I want the guys at SolidWorks to feel a little sting for my crash! Sometimes I’ll purposefully do the same steps several times so they can see my crash over and over. Revenge is sweet.

SolidWorks does look at the reports. They have a database that collects the reports and they do data mining against this database–looking for areas that may be problematic, spikes in the number of reports, new crash patterns, etc.

Part of the report lists the exact part of code that caused the crash, but this is only the smoking gun. The trick is that oftentimes there are many different ways to get to the same area of a program, that area may work perfectly for 99% of the ways but maybe you found a new combination of steps that cause the crash. If you can recall what you were doing when the crash occurred, no matter how small the detail, be sure to document this in the report.

It may not be your responsibility to debug SolidWorks, but if your report makes SolidWorks better everyone wins.

Jeff Sweeney

 Jeff Sweeney
Engineering Data Specialist
3DVision Technologies

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